Posts Tagged ‘The Blorg’

This page is brought to you in part by British Bulldog powerslam videos on YouTube, which I used several of to get the necessary references for the Johnny Law powerslam on Dos. This page is also my favourite one since the Fatty Bomb… which actually wasn’t that long ago, although it feels like months and months since I drew it. Actually it probably has been at least two months since I drew it… anyway, I like this page is my point.

I’m looking forward to my school semester being over so that I have time to draw Grunts (aka super secret side project) AND HEAT at roughly the same pace again, as right now all of HEAT Vol. 2 is written, but I still have a ton of pages left to draw, because this match is loooooong. I mean, it’s an 8 man elimination tag team match, so I suppose that’s normal, but still, very long.

On Saturday: This time it’s definitely all over, says Johnny Law. Because obviously he’s a reliable source on those sorts of things.

At no point in working on HEAT, until about five seconds ago, did I ever think I would have a Dead Poets Society joke in the comic in any context. Mostly because I typically forget that movie exists until it gets brought up in classes.

I use a lot of photo reference to help me draw the moves, and sometimes finding the right reference for what I’m trying to draw is a huge pain in the ass. For example, any time I want reference for somebody standing on the top rope, I pretty much have to try to take those photos myself at live shows, because finding them online is more hassle than it’s worth. Back suplexes, on the other hand, take roughly ten seconds looking at a Japanese wrestling magazine to find references from 17 different angles. I’m pretty sure it would take less effort to find a picture of a back suplex where somebody was on fire in a Japanese wrestling mag than it took me to find reference for the Bossman Slam on WWE.com. And that’s keeping in mind that Wade Barrett’s new finisher is the Bossman Slam. Madness.

I reeeeeally love how this page turned out. Usually when I get big ideas like the middle panel’s multi-image motion powerbomb/flying cross body combination the actual drawing of said ideas makes me hate my past self for coming up with it. This one went unusually smoothly, even the cross body landing which I have learned from experience is difficult to get right.

My friend Jay is going to be annoyed at me as a result of this page, as he was the one who won the contest way back when and created Invincinator. On the other hand, he can’t get TOO mad, since Invincinator was only supposed to show up in a brief cameo on page 37 and then ended up being present throughout the entire second book. I’m not going to miss having to draw his crazy Dragonball Z hair, though. Not at all.

On Saturday: We’re back to even strength at 3 wrestlers a piece. Who can secure the advantage? And will new spatula technology be required to peel Invincinator off of the mat?

I frequently write spots that don’t seem particularly onerous to draw, then I sit down to draw them and realize that I grossly underestimated the difficulty level of something like, say, this buckle bomb. Powerbombs are fairly straightforward to draw, but adding in the pivot and the impact in the corner increased the difficulty more than anticipated. And when in doubt, have the commentary team play amateur physician.

I finished writing volume 2 of HEAT the other day, and, uh, that ending isn’t coming any time soon. This is page 193, so we’ve got about 40 pages left to go. Oof. This is going to take a while. At least once school finishes in about a month I’ll be able to draw more.

Also, look for an RCW show review coming up in the next few days, for those of you who like those.

On Saturday: How do you follow a powerbomb into the turnbuckles? MOAR POWERBOMB.

And we have our first elimination! Rod Black is the first one out, putting Team 17E at a 4-3 disadvantage for the time being. Wait, the least-developed character is the first one eliminated!? It’s almost like there’s somebody writing this thing…

The viewing angle in panel 3 is brought to you by WWF Royal Rumble for Super Nintendo (and WWF RAW, and pretty much every wrestling video game until they started doing TV style cameras), which is an angle I really need to use more, since it looks neat and is relatively easy to draw. I also had a lot of fun drawing the lock-up to wristlock transition, which was a fun bit of technical wrestling that I really should do a little more often. I suppose it doesn’t help that most of the guys in this match are brawlers, powerhouses, and flyers.

Also, I still haven’t finished writing this match. In what probably isn’t a very surprising development, the 8 man elimination tag team match is going to be the longest one so far in the comic by quite a wide margin (and probably the longest one for a good long while, unless I do something crazy later on). I’m on page 214 or 215 in the script right now and there are still three guys left. So, uh, we’re gonna be here for a while.

On Saturday: Can Invincinator match Vinny’s technical skill, tag out, or generally do something productive? Come back next Saturday and find out!

Yep, it’s time for HEAT #187, which is appropriate since Rod Black may have just been murdered by Invincinator’s vertebreaker.

The vertebreaker was, if I’m remembering correctly, initially pitched by Invincinator’s creator, contest winner Jay, as a joke finisher that would be teased a lot but would never actually be hit because he was too small. Upon consideration, I realized I’ve never seen anyone use the vertebreaker who wasn’t small, so Invincinator has ended up hitting it a couple of times over the course of the comic. He’s never hit his signature move, though, which writing this just reminded me of. It’s the big boot, except it only ever hits guys in the stomach/chest because he’s too short to hit their faces.

On Saturday: Can Rod Black kick out of Invincinator’s vertebreaker, or are his vertebrae too vertebroken? Will he be the first elimination in the Super Max Challenge Cup finals!?

Alternate title for this page: Invincinator flails about violently then injures himself. Well, Rod Black injures him with a lungblower, but that’s just semantics. The semantics of pain… I need to use that as a strip title later. For some reason around the time I was writing this strip I became possessed by an overpowering desire to draw a lungblower, so I wrote it into the script for a page that I wasn’t going to draw for like two months, which did very little to assuage that overpowering desire. It was pretty fun when I finally got around to it, though, and I’m quite pleased with how Invincinator’s reaction turned out in the last panel.

In other news, the Royal Rumble is tomorrow! Or technically later today, since it’s shortly after midnight as I’m posting this because I forgot to upload the comic because me am smrt. Anyway, the Royal Rumble means the Royal Rumble drinking game, which means myself and several of my friends will get absolutely demolished and somebody will probably die after throwing up some fashion of important internal organ. Hopefully not me, because I have to draw more comics. And so I can collect the DVDs which I will hopefully be winning in the various Royal Rumble pick ’em contests I’ve entered.

On Saturday: Can Invincinator tag out before Rod Black can capitalize? Will the Bazooka Knee be loaded up? How does one load a knee? I don’t know the answer to that last one.

This is my favourite page in quite a while, and definitely my favourite body slam in the entire comic. Which puts it ahead of the one other body slam I’ve drawn in this comic (which, if I recall correctly, also involved Uno). Speaking of drawing this comic, I’ll actually have time to do more of that soon!

Also, this will be the last HEAT comic of 2011. On Saturday I’ll be posting this year’s Christmas Special, then I will be taking my customary Christmas break, with the main event of the Super Max Challenge resuming in early January. This is going to be a long-ass match.

This is one of those pages that features a relatively simple sequence wrestling-wise which turns out to be really hard to do in comic form. In retrospect it probably could have used a few more panels for the dropkick and shoulder tackle spots, but in all I think it turned out pretty well, particularly Vinny’s landing after the shoulder block. I’ve also gotten to the point that I can draw dropkicks without reference, which is nice, since when I started the comic, the dropkicks I drew without it looked like ass. Don’t believe me? Look at the double dropkick from the first Los Gordinflones Negros match.

I think I mentioned this earlier, but Vinny LaGrazo’s face protector is inspired by Cody Rhodes’ recent “undashing” gimmick and, far more obscurely, the face mask that Virgil wore at WrestleMania VIII in a godawful eight-man tag team match featuring the dregs of 1992’s midcard.

I kind of forgot about this page, but art-wise I’m very proud of it, pretty much all-around. I think the punches were referenced from photos of hockey fights, since simultaneous wrestling punches tend to look kind of stupid as static images (since they’re mostly foot-stamping and no-selling), which is actually something that I’ve noticed while drawing this comic. Good worked punches look great in motion, but really goofy in pictures, so for the most part HEAT wrestlers throw pretty typical comic book punches since they look more natural as still images.

Also, if the Cody Rhodes-loving contingent on my Twitter timeline reads this, they’re probably losing their shit over the Rhodes-inspired face protector that Vinny is wearing to protect his busted nose, although it turned out to look more like a traditional sports noseguard than Rhodes’ super villain mask.

On Wednesday: The punching leads to more punching. And some kicking. General mayhem, really.